HAIR & MONEY

 


..make dem no go start to perm the hair of toto, because na that time me sef go open shop- Fela Kuti
 
What is hair?, Hair is the waste product that comes out of the skin follicle of every living thing even when the person is long dead. In humans their hair on our head differ in color ranging from white, orange or black, hinging on one’s race, ancestry or genetics.
Since hair is a waste product, why then do black people spend money to add more hair (of dead people) artificial hair (in form of rubber hair as attachments) to add to their own waste product. What deeply seated colonization and bastardization would give normalcy to the enormous importation of the hair of dead people, to put it on our own for being long and straight. A foolishness ranging in the hundred of millions.
As Africans, we have to understand that our hair is just as unique and powerful to us as our white counterpart, Every bit of our thick, woolly and strong hair carries our identity and very powerful.
We need to understand why we must give respect to our hair as it represents our own ancestry, history and identity, You will never find a white person or a Japanese put a black Afro on his head outside of theatre, an entrenched sense of self and a respect to their ancestry will never allow such.
 
Colonization begot the slavery and inferiority complex in our sinews, that normalizes our Judges still putting on the wigs of their slave masters on their head as a continued symbol of white authority and slavery transmuted as depraved elitism in today’s Nigeria. The insult continues unchecked to the grave as many of them even get buried in them.
 
That slavery, that folly have grown and trickled down the generation to ironclad and almost genetic inferiority complex of the bastardization of our hair, a flawed sense of what beauty entails among now even the youth, an ignorance, and a systemic behemoth that have become the money laundering system in Nigeria used by woman to funnel money all around Nigeria, and to provide a form of employment that ensures the retardation of the female gender.
 
The hair could be your crown, or simply a waste product, it could be cut, braid, kept locked into dreads , but when a person have to import another man’s waste product just to put it on your own waste product, it is the same thing as importing the faeces of a white man to put in on your own feaces just o make it look good. Why do you  have to sit in a salon for 6 hours, get burned and tortured to just to strung and the same it begs the question how deeply etched is colonization and slavery that have eaten deep into the Nigerian psyche? and Could the image of the white, long haired God spread by Christianity complicit in this destruction of our minds? For by trying to be perfect like their heavenly father is, the black man imitate his look, salvaging his accursed skin with an import hair. Not knowing that the image is a foisted business that ensures your retardation as black people, and a dissatisfaction with your man , A coup on your psyche.
 
How do I know a woman I can’t afford? I look at the hair she’s sporting, I know even If I could afford to pay for a while, the sustainability of it would irk me to no end,  How much is the attachment ? How much is the workmanship of the woman or girls who gathered around to plait your hair?
And what is the long term sustainability of the rubber you add to your waste product
How many hours of her life does she waste doing the same thing? I don’t think I am overly reductionist when I say you can tell an intelligent woman by just looking at the hair on her head.
If it is long, she sat for long, doesn’t know what to do with her time and probably dumb.
 
When I was younger women made do with just relaxing their natural hair they sat under hair conditioners and read newspapers cam home and look good with their own natural hair. But who would have brought the use of rubber by our ladies if not the devil himself, since it invariably comes from his excrement (oil).
Utter madness when you look at it because it is a wig for christsakes, it is rubber and plastic , why would common sense evade them this conspicuously unless in this world of zombie humans it has evolved and become the laundering device of the Ogbanje System
 
It is laundering system because they get to take money from messed up organisations and not excludinng drug dealers, and kidnapping, pushing them around until it becomes clean.
Picture this with me, a monkey holds a patch of dry grass, brown with fir tresses  and starts running a comb through it talking on Youtube or instagram how this patch of grass is worth 1 million naira just because it is so, so and so, almost immediately another monkey jumps up excitedly and ask for that patch of grass and buy its for the said amount to as if imitate a transaction. What happens, the patch of dry grass have been given a contrived value, and bought for real money under the auspices of another expert review.  What you don’t see is that the two monkeys are the same and there is a puppeteering and money cleaning going on. Because the patch of grass get moved around and also fall subject to the economic reality of the time and inflation and what has given that patch of grass that much value, Nothing just the painted face of a monkey and the eagerness of the other.
So when the patch of grass get to the other monkey he hangs it on a wax figurine in it’s house and occasionally runs a comb through it, along with other patches of grass that litter this monkey’s house and that is a living. The money: contrived, inflated, pushed around, cleaned and disappears.
 
Since attachments and wigs come from oil, this cacophony help further damage the planet in the long run, not to talk about the water that is used by these factories to produce these wigs.  Overall from refining, production, packaging, advertising and eventual retail sale the money is unprecedented.
If not folly calculate with me the money a Nigerian lady spends on a hair in a year. You  are looking at hair of 3 weeks divided by the 52 weeks in a years means she spend 17 times in a year, on a average attachment of 5 thousand and pay workmanship of 5 thousand to the one who plaits, and you are looking at 170,000 thousand naira per year multiply it by 100 million women in Nigeria, it amounts to trillions of naira on a frivoliity, and remember it’s all on an average, as some spend more than that.
 Not to talk of the wigs and human hair especially the bone straight which is another nebulous dimension it’s own. I wouldn’t go into the companies producing these wigs, the labour practices and the amount of money in play; I would simply leave that for your imagination.
 
And many of these laddies spend these much on their hair every year and cant’ afford their own houses, can’t afford good healthcare, can’t even buy themselves a decent meal.
If these money was gathered in donation to an NGO or a trustfund, they could open up a basketball or volleyball league for girls, it could buy sanitary pad for secondary school girls. Would they rather discontinue this folly? While the average feminist throws her neck to rearrange her mental tail before spewing the same shite, FGM continues to no end. If the money seems hexed, educating themselves would allow them to circumvent from the source, and make good use of it rather than this continued madness.
 
Why cant they keep their hair, cut or make dreads? allowing water touch their much needed empty On Instagram, you see a girl talking about a wig or attachment in their millions and the EFCC is doing nothing to inquire into where they got the money they are spending. How can an undergraduate be sporting a wig of 200 thousand naira, what for? And why? Even if they have wealthy parents.
 
When we take a cursory look at the lack of beauty the strenuousness of it and the overall environmental pollution in unchecked recurrence and now normalcy of plaiting a hair with a planned obsolescence of 3 weeks, and it is off again to subject themselves to what I can only describe as torture which involves the use of candles hot water and being pulled at all sides and carry a smelly weight for 3 weeks, constantly scratching and sniffing their fingers, we can only blame something demonic at work.
Some do it because of sheer imitation, lack of a sense of self and beauty, while some do it just so they can reach behind their butts and touch the length of their mental tails at interval. Hairs are pulled from their, follicles drag to cut, their faces pulled, necks strained to look plastered, stretched and greasy and frankly not an intelligent look.
 
On the street and you’d see 2 weeks old chicks with half a leg, or bound and struggling to walk, because to make things worse they can’t properly dispose of these plastic after use. Considering that they are in demand every 3 weeks, our bins are constantly filled with these accursed webs that collectively slow us down as a race. All from a  contrived and flawed sense of beauty, reductionist at best.
 
I can’t judge this Ogbanje system knowing that it has existed before my birth and frankly the only way to make money in this country. I just wish they were centered towards development and not this retardation, that they taught our girl children better and better prepare them for self actualization, reliance and life of individuated fulfillment and peace. There remains a lot of pertinent issues that they could collectively save up on and tackle, like girl child marriage and other ills faced by girls in the society, so that they can make Nigeria an d Africa a better whole,
But it seems they are just conscripting our girls to a life of prostitution, stacking up the hate filled hag wagon with the same kind because many of these ogbanje women never got to get married they make sure that these new girl don’t also find happiness. But they ave to transmute, forgive themselves, accept their fate and make the life a better one for the coming generation.
 
Retardation and Providence
By keeping our young girls just above primary level of thinking, they retard them and ensure they can never be anything aside tailors, hairdressers and petty traders. They use this system to keep their young girl dumb and funneling money and skimming off the top for sustenance and call it self employment, they waste the minds of these girls, All their lives they talk about rubber, wig, human hair, brazilian wig, bone straight, and celebrity gossip. Eventually molding the sub human of canonized stupidity. It is another form of slavery as the weavon and attachment industry in the worth of trillions of dollars, that means someone at the top is cashing out heavy on the ignorance of our girls, and there is no check to it. The retardation of us as a race since an educated woman is an educated nation, The hair industry is an example of what ignorance can become if left unchecked.
 
What made African women hate their own hair and refuse to sport it free of charge, Malcolm X said  who taught you to hate your own hair that you have to go an straight it out to look like the White man. I say “Church”, I say “Christianity” the religion of inferiority complex and slavery. This Hair or better still fir industry  is the reason why women see plaiting of hair as an employment, once a girl finishes secondary school, rather than allow her explore her options and read she is sent to go and learn hairdressing or tailoring, as a form of self employment she can have to support the vermin she is destined go carry No recourse is given to the development of her mind.
 
The Ogbanje system is a very sick system it  creates just enough capital and employment for a person, by subjecting them to stay in a cubicle somewhere, looking at a hung mirror for hours waiting for a person to come and plait hair and probably share tales and gossip; and that is her life, very fucked up. You tell her that maybe you shouldn't be alive in the first place, that there is a system in place that ensured your birth will keep you fed enough and with just enough hope to keep you enslaved.
Saddling you with hope from religion as your mainstay with just enough time to proliferate the same hopelessness as children ad infinitum, But they will say that’s too much.
 
It will require action, Ladies I am talking action, taking one by shaking vehemently this table I know many of you twerk on, scattering it no matter whose ox is gored, We can’t keep living like this, the Ogbanje system want to see that the proliferated remain enslaved.
I see a hag going to plait her hair and fix her nails, I see the umpteenth mental tail resting on broad shoulder, distended belly and yam legs. I point to a diet free of meat and bread for at least 3 years, but dare not tell her because I can see her trying to tear a smile from her wrinkled face, turns her neck suddenly but this time it is slower and somewhat forceful to drop the heap to the side, taking the millionth selfie, she wince for I know she too can tell that she felt a tad heavy and the action is  overplayed. Why cant she evaluate her self and focus on a more natural way considering the obvious, she swallows the half-assed goads knowing she will be back again because the hairdresser have to eat, the same system that gave her money must continue her folly. She has to pass it on. If I say neither of them should have be born in the first.. you’d stop me short and quote inanity about life’s sanctity. But is this really life.
At least admit that the amount of money we spend on this foolishness in this country bewildering
What could have been a way forward is to allow to ultimately curtail birth, diversify volition and teach our girls their heritage and how to  know and respect their blackness, their hair and even respect themselves, an overall improvement of education that teaches determinism and self reliance, A bar on the import of attachment weavons other form of human and artificial hair, Scrutinizing and taxing the Hair industry for their consequent environmental pollution.
Love your hair, love your black image, Let them keep dreadlocks, cut or plait their natural hair, and spend the equivalent of what they would have spent on hair on their head and the collective improvement of their minds.
 
 
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